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We're posting a series of #ShortTakes on our current time of quarantine and #COVID19. First, @ERICGUDAS on the social distancing inherent in the freelancer's life. https://twitter.com/LAReviewofBooks/status/1239378366215737344
. @Kate_Gale of @RedHenPress asks, "Is the coronavirus the end of the world as we know it?" https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/is-the-end-nigh/
"Are the numbers I’ve chosen realistic? Nobody knows." Philip Kitcher considers coronavirus screening: https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/coronavirus-welcome-america/
It was a dream of globalization to create touchless reality, a virtual togetherness without bodily involvement. In the age of the new coronavirus, that dream has been shattered. @michael_marder's Short Take on the coronavirus: https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/contagion-before-beyond-covid-19/
. @hannahamarisroh on letting go: "This philosophy of oneness has revised my experience of catharsis. I no longer think of it as a purging of negative emotions." https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/another-kind-metaphysics-learning-let-go/
"Denying anyone medical care is heartbreaking, but denying someone out of bias is exponentially worse." @gullette_mm https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/ageist-triage-covid-19
John Rember on having one's book tour cancelled by the coronavirus outbreak https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/book-tour-cancelled-coronavirus/
"The virus was racialized from the moment 'China' appeared in the global lexicon of COVID-19 discourse." @joeykim on the Orientalism of our current moment. https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/orientalism-age-covid-19
. @uclagseis_dean on the enduring association between migrants and contamination, contagion, and disease. https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/immigrations-malaise/
"Two things are clear from the current viral onslaught: the first is that we too are paralyzed by an unshakeable sense of terror; and the second is that, while such prime emotion feels new and untamable, it is as old as humankind." @IlanStavans on fear. https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/on-fear/
"On March 20, the entire Fulbright program was officially suspended for the 2019-2020 year. All grants have been terminated." @MaiaEvrona on being a Fulbright Scholar during this pandemic: https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/fulbright-covid-19/
"The pandemic’s a trust exercise in the government, in my co-citizens. I cannot trust." @Ariel_Saramandi with a dispatch on COVID-19 from Mauritius: https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/une-petite-grippe-covid-19-dispatch-mauritius/
"The virus has disrupted not only our lives, but also our deaths." @mmemarian writes from Iran: https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/corona-affairs-iranian-style/
"In the normal course of things, anyone from Wyoming with a complicated medical emergency is taken by helicopter to Denver." @zarielle on living in the least populous state during this pandemic: https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/covid-19-wyoming/
"Despite the supreme irrationality of this kind of magic ritual — can we honestly say that there isn’t something rational about the idea of finding a reason to be happy during this dark time?" @NatanMeir on the cholera wedding: https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/cholera-wedding-meaning-time/
"If cruelty is a threat of our mode of existence at the best of times, let us be particularly wary of what is to come under the new reality. In particular, let us make sure this does not become the new normal." Elena Comay del Junco on selfishness. https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/parables-of-the-plague/
"The annihilation of Lisbon was not the will of God or of Nature, but a signal failure of human planning." William M. Burton on what we can learn now from the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake and its cultural aftershocks. https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/1755-lisbon-earthquake-now/
"I’m looking at you, Sam Beckett, on the occasion of your birthday, in the midst of the kind of scorched earth event that many of your works imply has already occurred. Life in the aftermath." Michael Coffey shelters with Beckett. https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/sheltering-with-beckett/
"There is something in the nature of a pandemic that forces upon us the sense of the fleeting instant, the moment that appears and disappears forever." https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/coronavirus-crisis-missed-opportunity/
"Please, people with enormous talents for studying history and works of art, what forms of care can help us now?" @AbrahamLinds https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/come-closer-please-can-pay-attention-stories-care/
Want some new nonfiction reading suggestions? Here's @jwassers with an anti-COVID-reading-list COVID reading list. https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/reading-expansively-confining-times-ten-new-non-fiction-books-not-plagues/
"If psychoanalysis has anything to offer right now — and in truth, at the moment, this is very little — it is that it has always insisted on precisely what we are now coming to understand: no one is immune." Emma Lieber: https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/analysts-couch-lamp/
"The moral and practical lesson to be drawn from human-induced environmental threats such as climate change and Covid-19 is simple: there exists a direct correlation between our lack of respect for nature and our own well-being." Mark J. Plotkin: https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/coronavirus-and-conservation/
"Many elderly Republicans may eventually come to realize that their hero in the White House is murdering them, but while waiting for the penny to drop the massacre will continue." Mike Davis: https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/elderly-unworthy-of-life
"What does it mean to stand still? How are we supposed to do this?" @benjamin_ware and @BalaskaMaria on waiting, stillness, and anxiety. https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/still-life
